Alex Salmond, A Predator Who Changed Scottish Politics Forever

The first thing to say about Alex Salmond is that I believe his victims. The evidence that he sexually assaulted numerous women may not have reached the evidential bar necessary for criminal conviction – too often, it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t sexually assault numerous women. It may not have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. But it seems very likely that it happened.

At the very least, the behaviour to which his lawyers admitted during his trial, and the groping handsiness which women warned each other about long before the allegations became public, may not have been criminal. But that doesn’t make it excusable. 

Some members of the independence movement took it all to be an MI5 stitch up. And there is plenty of evidence that MI5 is willing to run stings against elected British politicians. But there is more evidence that, in the case of Salmond, they didn’t need to. 

The second thing to say about Salmond is that he also did good things.

As first minister, he led a government which scrapped tuition fees and prescription charges in Scotland – great victories for a universalist social democracy which both Labour and Tories have worked to kill on these islands in recent decades. Thousands of Scots have had better lives as a result. English political debate is better for the good example.

30 years earlier, as a young activist, he had driven the SNP to the left, and played a – arguably the – central role in shaping the modern independence movement as a progressive force against the inherent conservatism of the British state, rather than a tartan fringe focused on cultural questions. Throughout his life, he was one of the few British politicians who spoke up for the rights of Palestinians.

And while successful politicians are able surfers rather than creators of historic waves, Salmond was certainly a key actor in ensuring it was his party – and its critique of the British state – which benefited from the failures of Blairism.

His success in 2007, when he led the SNP to become the largest party in Holyrood by a tiny margin, didn’t come from growing support for independence – that was still a marginal idea. It came from his vocal opposition to the Iraq war, Labour’s part privatisations and top up fees. And it was unusually personal. On the regional ‘list’ ballot, the SNP changed its party name across Scotland to “Alex Salmond for first minister”. He was elected with an almost presidential mandate, and his success in 2011 – where the SNP won its ‘impossible’ majority and the right to an independence referendum – came because he was seen to have delivered most of his promises.

One of the reasons for his popularity, then, which was also one of the reasons for the long enduring loyalty to him among a certain tranche of the independence movement, is that he was a sort of politician which Westminster politics rarely produces – one who had made personal connections with thousands of (and a measurable portion of the population of) people in Scotland. For many who met him – young men in particular – he was exceptionally charismatic. Obviously many others – young women in particular – didn’t have that experience. 

Part of that appeal came from the fact that he showed genuine interest in people and their ideas. He read astonishing amounts, and could flatter people he met – particularly independence supporters – by revealing that he had absorbed and understood some argument they had made in this or that website or journal. In that sense, he was unusual in that he emerged from a social movement and remained part of it, and engaged in it, even as he helped transform it from a fringe into a government.

Alongside the sexual predation, bullying and abuse of power revealed in his final decade, another character flaw common in prominent men emerged: he seemed to crave endless attention. Unable to shuffle into retirement, he became a source of constant division in the independence movement. Debate about ideas and ideology is a good thing in a social movement. Splitting over personal loyalty to a leader is not. Launching a party, Alba, whose only distinctive policy other than wanting to shout ‘independence’ louder is beating up on trans people is not.

His death – almost exactly a year after that of the Better Together chairman Alistair Darling, a few months after the SNP’s Westminster massacre, and less than a month after Scotland marked a decade since the 2014 independence referendum – signals the end of a slightly awkward phase in Scottish politics, in which much of it was still shaped by looking back to the indyref. 

It also comes as a new movement emerges. It’s been clear for a few years that the independence movement would only be able to seriously take off again once Scotland had been disappointed by another failed Labour government. I’d assumed it would take a couple of years to reach that point. In practice, it has only taken a couple of months for the inability of the British state and its two main parties to deliver the change we need to become clearer than ever.

There will of course, quite rightly, be a period of reflection for the next few weeks. Those who personally loved Salmond – both family members and the thousands of people who felt deep personal connections with him – will mourn. I can’t imagine how the victims of his sexual predation will cope.

But then, hopefully, we can stop talking about him. And the movement for independence can get back to doing what it does when it’s at its best: looking to the future.